There are hundreds of smart home devices on the market, very few of them are cheap, a simple thermometer is £10, a radiator valve is more like £40, a smart light switch is around £15, a control unit is up to £100. Kitting out a home could cost around £600.
With average UK energy bills around £1,700 per year, these devices would need to save about a third off bills to pay back within two years.
The good news is that this is possible, but it requires careful management and works much better for gas than electricity. Smart light switches won’t save much money.
A typical UK house with 9 rooms, spends about £600 a year on space heating with gas, which is just over £3 per day. Many houses have a single thermostat (for some reason this is in the entrance hall in lots of homes), and the heating runs for three hours in the morning and five hours in the evening.
Using a smart radiator thermostat to only heat rooms when they are in use could half the amount of gas used, saving £300 per year. Giving a two-year payback period.
Fitting a radiator valve is very easy. If you have gone with a single supplier getting it set up on their home control app is slightly more complicated but still achievable. Mixing technologies from different suppliers is only to be attempted by the brave or foolhardy.
Unfortunately, there is no way to link these smart in-home devices to a smart meter. This is despite them mostly using the same communications technology of ZigBee. Hopefully future smart meters will open this data channel to allow better control.
£600 is still a large amount of money for a house to find. Perhaps I was not alone in not knowing that there are grants available for smart radiator valves. If you are on benefits and use an accredited supplier you may be able to get this funded under the Ofgem ECO4 scheme.
